Ecuador Pichincha Galo Morales Honey Sidra

Description

What's in the cup? This is a medium bodied cup with flavors of watermelon and hibiscus. This is a nice showcasing of an often maligned varietal.Will it Spro? Yes, it Turbos well.Sidra varietal grown by Galo Fernando Morales Flores at Finca Cruz Loma in San José de Minas, Pichincha Province. Low intervention Honey process (pulped and fermented 48 hours, then dried on raised beds), 1450 masl.Roast Color: 131.2 (higher is lighter)Recommended Minimum Rest: 3 weeksSold in 300g bags.Brewmaster J's Notes and Tips:S&W Galo Sidra Washed Ecuador I got a very typical Sidra cup with abundant spiced apple and caramel along with an occasional floral not on the back end that hit somewhere near lavender for me. Later cups had a bit of a shiraz note once fully cooled, but not heavy, boozy, or unpleasant. Overall this one hits somewhere between a washed coffee in its cleanliness and a natural in its fruit forward profile, which is exactly where I want honey process coffees to land. Brews were fairly predictable within that 90C and 1:16 ratio. Grind a little finer for more intensity, a little coarser to open things up. The recipe below is a bit of a middle ground.- Grind 5.0 ZP6- Temp 90C- Brewer V60-01- Recipe 4 pour 15g/240g recipe 50/80/70/50 with a 45s bloom, 5-7g/s poursFrom the producer:Together, the family oversees four unique processes for their coffee: fully washed; “anaerobic” washed, honey, and natural. This Sidra separation was processed as a honey: cherry was hand-picked and selectively sorted for ripeness and consistency in the field; after depulping the cherry, the parchment was fermented in open tanks for 48 hours and then moved without any further washing to Cruz Loma’s solar dryer where it spent 18-25 days on raised screen beds.  Honey process coffees typically forego any fermentation step after depulping, instead going straight to drying with all the fibrous mucilage entangled around it. In this case, the mucilage has been broken down quite a bit and the parchment sheds some of it as a resultGalo Fernando Morales Flores, along with his wife Maria Alexandra Rivera and his extended family, grow coffee on their 350-hectare plot in the community of San José de Minas, a small town in the northwestern part of Pichincha, a short trip north of Quito. They describe their farm, Finca Cruz Loma, as a marvelous paradise whose temperate, tropical climate allows for a huge variety of flora to thrive—the family grows guanábana (soursop), corn, beans, and a plethora of citrus—all in addition to coffee. Coffee, though always a source of income, has recently brought a lot of recognition for Galo, Maria Alexandra, and the whole family, as winners of Pichincha’s regional quality competition and as featured producers in Ecuador’s national barista competition, both in 2019. In 2020, Cruz Loma took third place in the national “Taza Dorada” quality competition. Across residents and tourists alike Ecuador has a strong domestic market for roasted coffee, so honors such as these have no small impact on a farm’s brand. Finca Cruz Loma has been in Galo’s family going back 80 years. His grandparents were the first owners, who passed the property to their children, and now he and his four brothers are in charge. Galo’s experience in coffee began 20 years ago working alongside his mother on the farm; he would go on to work professionally in the coffee sector, for exporters and as a project manager, before returning to full-time farming. In Galo’s words, “cultivating my coffee is an activity that allows me to apply and develop the skills and habits I’ve learned over the years; it’s also an essential resource for my family, since my wife, my daughters, and myself are all involved with the production and marketing of our coffee. Everybody in the family has a critical role in the coffee’s success.” The principal harvest months in northern Pichincha are June to September, but the family continues picking through December. Ecuador’s namesake position on the Earth’s equator means that medium-altitude coffee enjoys practically a perfect year-round growing season, often with flowering and ripe cherry sharing the same branch most months.